Semiconductor integrated circuits wafers are produced by a plurality of processes in a wafer fabrication facility (fab). These processes, and associated fabrication tools, may include thermal oxidation, diffusion, ion implantation, rapid thermal processing (RTP), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), epitaxy, etch, and photolithography. For some products, the semiconductor wafer may pass through up to 600 process steps.
For photolithography and other patterning processes, data preparation and mask/wafer design are significant parts of the integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing process. Mask/wafer design conventionally involves numerous design and evaluation processes performed in a sequential manner. For example, various processes are required prior to provide optical proximity correction (OPC) for the wafer design process. Numerous other post-OPC processes are then performed. Upon invocation of the mask/wafer design process, sequential processes must await completion of a previous process before the next process may be invoked. Upon supply of an initial mask/wafer design, the overall mask/wafer design process may typically consume over three days processing time.